There seems to be widespread agreement that San Francisco drivers are a pretty incompetent bunch. But San Francisco walkers? Yup, there's plenty of room for improvement there, too.

Last week, this column called for a citywide resolution for everybody who uses San Francisco's streets to pay more attention and be more considerate. After all, 21 pedestrians were killed last year, the highest number since 2007.

Fifty percent of traffic deaths in San Francisco are pedestrians compared with the national average of 16 percent, according to the pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco. That's the second highest of any city in the country - behind just New York City.

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But, according to many readers who responded to the column, drivers here may be awful, but the city's pedestrians aren't exactly the most diligent and law-abiding citizens either.

"I agree Bay Area drivers are impatient, rude and inconsiderate for sure," wrote Owen Rubin. But, he added, so are pedestrians. "Sometimes more so."

Rubin and many others said it's nearly impossible for drivers to turn left or right at stoplights in the city because pedestrians fill the crosswalks the entire time drivers have green lights - dashing across the street even after the countdown clock has nearly expired or the red hand is lit up.

"In fact, even when the light turns red, the foot traffic continues without regard to any motorist," wrote Paul Capurro, the owner of Capurro's, a Fisherman's Wharf restaurant. "All I'm saying is there are two sides to this story, and we seem to be only hearing one."

Others complained that pedestrians are too often buried in their smartphones, wear all black at night or dart out from between parked cars to jaywalk across busy streets.

Phyllis Harlicksaid she even recently saw a pedestrian run across Market Street right in the path of a speeding fire engine with its siren blaring and lights flashing.

"They did make it safely, obviously, or there would have been a big article about a fire engine hitting a pedestrian," said Harlick.

Nicole Schneider, executive director of Walk San Francisco, agreed that everybody needs to be more responsible on the city's busy streets. But she said the facts are that pedestrians are mostly dying at the hands of bad drivers.

Last year, drivers were found to be at fault in three-quarters of the collisions in which pedestrians were killed. Of the rest, most of the pedestrians were senior citizens and one was in a wheelchair. They weren't exactly the ones dashing across streets in front of fire engines.

"We have no way of knowing if those people couldn't make it across the street in time or if the wheelchair broke down," she said.

She said the bottom line is that there will always be human error - in cars and on foot - and that the city needs to do a much better job ensuring the streets and sidewalks are built so mistakes don't lead to deaths.

We hope that's something everybody can agree on.

We knew the soda industry was going to come out swinging against the city's proposed ballot measure to tax sugary drinks. But the mayor's education adviser? We didn't see that one coming.

Hydra Mendoza, who is also a school board member, disagreed with the board's decision to endorse the ballot measure and shared some strong opinions when we asked her about it later.

She said her main concern is that the November ballot is already getting crowded and that her priority is getting voter approval to reauthorize two separate streams of money that benefit children and will soon expire.

One is the Public Education Enrichment Fund, which gives $60 million in city funds each year to children's and school programs and expires in 2015. The other is the Children's Fund, which designates a portion of property taxes totaling about $45 million each year for children's programs. It expires in 2016.

Mendoza said it would be easy for those to be confused with the soda tax, which would levy a 2-cent-per-ounce tax on sodas and generate $31 million a year for the programs related to children's health. She said she doesn't want the big bucks of the soda industry used against the other two.

She said the school board voted on the soda tax too soon, considering the city attorney is still crafting the ballot language.

"We don't even know what the language is," she said. "We don't even know what we're debating."

Her opinion wouldn't be a big deal - if she didn't have the ear of the mayor. He hasn't taken a position on the soda tax yet, but his spokeswoman said he will.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, who is backing the soda tax measure along with several other supervisors, said Mendoza's concerns are "not founded" - and those are fighting words from the mild-mannered Wiener.

He said November ballots in even-numbered years are always packed with ballot measures because they're high turnout elections when either the president or the governor is also on the ballot.

"Voters in San Francisco are highly sophisticated and they look at each individual measure," he said.

He said he intends to submit the soda tax measure at the board on Feb. 4. We look forward to a frothy, fizzy debate.

Quote of the week

"Times change. New generations come along. It's easy to go on a diatribe against techies, but they want to find the cutest spot in the cutest city, too."

Armistead Maupin, author of the "Tales of the City" series, on San Francisco's current wave of newcomers